Frostbitten - Chapter Fourteen

By the time noon had come and gone, Holly was about ready to knock the brains out of the so-called physicians.  That is, if their skulls contained anything that could resemble brains.

“He is completely healthy” was the universal opinion.  “His near-coma is induced by mental stress.  There’s nothing to do except wait it out.”

As Holly watched the last quack leave, brushing his hands off as if the ‘mental stress’ were contagious, Bianca closed the door behind him.

“I didn’t think they could help,” she murmured.

Holly sank into a chair, sat for about three seconds, and then leapt up again.  “Why, Jack?” she shouted at the unconscious man on the bed.  “Why?  What’s the point?  What are you trying to pull?”

As if trying to answer her, Jack groaned and arched his back, pulling at the pillow underneath his head.  The fabric slipped from between his fingers, and he grasped at it again and again. 

Holly felt her eyes fill.  “Out of my way,” she muttered, shoving Bianca aside and darting into the hall.  She ran past nurses and doctors, and almost overturned an occupied gurney to get by faster.  She descended the two flights of stairs,  crossed the lobby, and burst out into the fresh, cold air.

Almost instantly a wind dried the tears escaping onto her cheeks.  She sniffed and hunched her shoulder, scrubbing the last of the dampness from her skin.  The hub of Invierno business – the Winter Boulevard – lay stretched out before her, and there was no way anyone was going to see the Holly crying.

She looked up at the pale disc of sun.  Going to the side of the hospital’s frontal façade, Holly dropped onto one of the benches, specially made from snow for the pickier Ice People.   She picked at the flaky surface while she thought.  And thought.

Who could help Jack?

Holly raked her free hand through her hair.  Who knew.

Then she sat bolt upright.  She did know.

“Ah-ha!” Holly sang, jumping to her feet.  She ignored the doubtful look a woman exiting the hospital shot her.  “I am a genius!”

Holly ran bank into the hospital and made for the nearest transmitter booth.  She snatched the speaker/repeater from its square charger box, unplugged it, then eyed the map as the transmitter powered up.  An image of Sector Country materialized, and Holly tapped Legend Sector.  Legend swarmed closer, and Holly pecked the area of New Athens.  The districts kept getting smaller and smaller until Holly managed to locate Hermes’s house.

“Across from the Blacksmith’s temple...” Holly suppressed a shudder of bad memories, and tapped Hermes’s house.  She held the speaker/repeater to her ear.

“The party in question has turned off his transmitter.” The warm, electronic voice made Holly’s heart stop.  “We suggest attempting another location, or calling at another—“

“I suggest you melt,” Holly said, smacking the speaker/repeater into the side of the box and jamming its charger cable in its plug. 

She slumped against the glass side of the booth.  Now what... she thought, thumping her head back into the glass.  Guess I’ll have to try later.

“Thanks a lot, Hermes,” she muttered, pushing the booth door to the side and stumbling out into the hospital lobby again.  People swarmed around her, and she had to stand on her tiptoes and keep her elbows out to avoid getting trampled.  “Why can’t anyone stay safe anymore?” she ranted at the crowds, mindless of who heard her.  “All have to be in here getting injuries... probably ingrown toenails, bunch of ice-less freaks.  Forget you, Hermes!” she suddenly exclaimed, fighting her way to the stairs.

“Now, that’s not very nice.”

Holly whirled around and nearly buried her nose in the white cloth of a Grecian-style tunic.  “Hermes!” she yelped.

Frostbitten - Chapter Thirteen

Hermes sat with his head in his hands.

Why hadn’t he gone with them?

You’re guilty, he told himself.  You’re a guilty idiot.

And he wasn’t being easy on himself.  He was a moron.  A cowardly, selfish moron.

Once a thief, always a thief, he thought.

Then he stood up, so abruptly that his chair clattered to the floor.

“No point to sitting and feeling sorry for myself,” he muttered.  “Might as well go and see if I can sweep up the remains.”

Hermes went to his bedroom, glanced out at the early morning sun, and located a suitcase.

“If there are remains,” he added in an undertone.

Frostbitten - Chapter Twelve

“Oh, fire-flares,” Bianca cursed quietly when they entered the hospital room.

Holly slipped past the younger pixie and went to Jack’s side.  He hadn’t moved an inch, but his face and fingers twitched in agitation.  Passing a hand over his lukewarm forehead, Holly looked back at Bianca.  “I told you.”

Bianca ordered her two bodyguards – the same guys Holly had frozen – to stay outside, then came in and closed the door behind her.  She padded to Holly’s side.  “What happened?”

Holly told her to story.  When she finished, Bianca lowered herself to the edge of the bed.  She put a hand on Jack’s chest, and Holly bristled.  Bianca didn’t seem to notice.  “What has the hospital done?”

“Nothing,” Holly said, glaring at Bianca’s hand.  “He’s healthy, but in a coma.  They don’t know what to do.”

Bianca shook her head.  “I’ll see if I can bring in a royal physician,” she said, “but I doubt they’ll know.”

“Try.”

Bianca glanced at Holly again.  “I will,” she said with a little more snappishness.  “I care more about him than you do.”

Holly bridled.  “Don’t even start that argument.”

“You dragged him into every war he started,” Bianca snapped, standing.  “All of it was for you.  By you.”

“He did it all himself,” Holly said.  “I helped.  But I didn’t make him.”

“You ruined his life!” Bianca hissed.

Holly balled her fists.  “I didn’t see him suffering any time but now!”

“I would bet anything on the assumption that what he’s going through right now is because of those wars!  And he started those wars for you!”

“I don’t even know what you’re trying to say by that—“

Jack moaned.  Both women snapped their gazes to him.  Holly tried to loosen the tenseness in her shoulders, but it didn’t work.  Not with Jack’s face twisted in pain.

Holly looked back at Bianca.  Her face was even paler than normal, and she twisted her fingers together until the skin wrinkled.  “You said he was comatose,” she whispered.

“He was.” Holly closed her eyes, got a grip on her emotions, and then turned to Bianca.  “Go get the physicians, will you?  They need to get here.”

“I don’t take orders from you.” Bianca’s voice sounded low and husky.  She pushed her shoulders back and aimed a poisonous glare at Holly.  “I’m doing this for Jack Frost.  Not you.”

“Duh.” Holly sat on the bed edge and took Jack’s hand in hers.

Bianca pursed her lips, stalked to the door, and threw it open.  “Wynn!” she barked at one of her bodyguards.  “I want an audience with the Queen and her physicians.  Now.”

Frostbitten - Chapter Eleven

Interspersed among the soldier images, Jack saw a house.

It was a huge house, like a Home Reality-style Victorian.  It hovered in the midst of a mountain forest of pine, about a yard in the air.  Snow flurried to the ground, but it didn’t last long; on the opposite side of the clouds, the sun melted away the frost.  It gurgled farther down the hillside.

That was all Jack saw at first.  Then a man with a lung hanging out of his split-open belly swallowed up his gaze.

*

Now Jack was inside the house.  The room was huge, with a vaulted ceiling, mosaic walls, and gold-leafed columns along the edges.  People, all dressed in immaculate gowns and robes, flitted here and there.  Some had skin as white as Jack’s; others had flesh so dark it was nearly black.  Some emanated heat, some left trails of sparkling frost behind them, while a few had trains of birds fluttering around their heads.  But they all glowed with power and immortality.

Jack saw himself.  He looked younger, maybe sixteen or seventeen.  His hair grew long, almost to his shoulders, and it was stark white, like his skin and eyes.  His tunic was white, too, with satin edges of wintergreen.  The fur-lined cloak draped about his shoulders sparkled snowy at times, then flickered to a pale blue.  A slim belt of white fur around his waist held a graceful dagger with a blade of what looked like ice.  He looked more powerful than any of the people in the room.

*

After another tangle with bloodied, mangled soldiers, Jack’s subconscious returned to the house.

There had been so much blood, even his mind’s eye now saw everything past a haze of red.

He saw himself again, clasped inside the arms of an older woman whose sanguine features were lost in the crimson cloud.  His eyes were closed, and she had a hand to his hair, as if she were comforting him.  The others in the ballroom – clearly what it was – all stood still.

Then the house began to shake.

* 

Another clash with the soldiers. One screamed at Jack, his indecipherable language suddenly making sense.  He wailed his life’s story, each description of his children, each detail of his achievements digging its claws into Jack’s brain.

Finally the soldier whirled away, and Jack was back at the house.  Either it was still shaking, or his mind was about to shatter; either way, the ballroom was also empty.  Except for one figure.  The red woman, sprawled facedown on the floor.  Even in the trembling, scarlet frame, Jack could see the blood stain, the pool oozing from her chest.

He didn’t know her.  Or, at least, he didn’t think he did.  But one thought shrieked through the quivering mass of color.

Why wasn’t I there?

Frostbitten - Chapter Ten

Present Time

There was a new ruler of Legend, but she wasn’t from the Ice People, so the Ice People’s monarch was still situated in Invierno.  The Palace was at the northwest, scooping a half-mile of snowy tundra out of the city to make room for the gardens of evergreen plants and the sprawling, gleaming white castle.  The dawn sun shone dimly on the fresh-fallen snow, and Holly felt a little better in the natural chill, rather than the manufactured hospital one.

She strode up the road that led to the front of the Palace.  No one was up at this time of day, but the Queen was probably up and around already, taking care of royal  business.

After fifteen minutes of walking, Holly finally hopped up the broad steps and approached the two guards standing watch at the front gate.  “Yo,” she panted, resting her palms against her knees briefly.  Someone had to fix that Olympic race track of a driveway.  “Let me in.”

The guards, dressed in white plate armor that probably wouldn’t stop a hail ball the size of a fly, looked over Holly at the same time.  “Name, please,” one said.

“Holly.”

“Holly what?” the other drawled.

Holly glared at him.  “Just Holly.  Haven’t you ever read your history?”

The two men blinked.

“I’m a free woman, okay?  I’ve done my time, and all that.  Just let me in.”

“The Queen is well-guarded,” the man on the right said, maintaining a lazy stance as he opened his side of the door.  “Any assassination attempt will be thwarted.”

“Oh, for the love of—“ Holly shot the two men another dirty look as the other door opened.  She strode through the gate.  “It’s not about the Queen, I need Bia—“

The weight hit her hard between her shoulder blades.  Holly hit the ground, her chin cracking against the floor.  She felt her teeth dig into the sides of her cheeks and lip and tasted blood.  The guard on her back grasped at her wrists and yanked them behind her.

Holly squealed and brought one leg up, smacking the man’s back.  He grunted and fell forward onto her.  Holly choked, bucked, managed to kick him off.  “You lunatic!” she gasped out.  She managed to get to a sitting position before a foot landed in her ribs.

“Oof!” Holly skidded back, her head now hitting the marble floor.  Tears sprang to her eyes, and she gritted her teeth.  “You are so, so dead.”

Ice crusted over one guard’s head.  His eyes widened, and his lips worked feverishly as he tried to get a breath.  The second man stared at his companion, then whirled around to Holly, but ice shot up from the ground, twisted around his legs, and held him in place.  When he started shouting and swearing, Holly, still sprawled on the floor, willed a sheet of ice to shut his mouth.

“It’s not polite to curse before a lady,” she said, picking herself up and dusting her clothes daintily.

“What is going on here?”

Holly whipped around.  The beautiful foyer of the Palace greeted her, all glowing blue lights and wintergreen walls.  Two staircases curved from the opposite side of the room, cradling a set of double doors.  It was from the double doors that the shouter stormed.

“Oh, great,” muttered.

Bianca marched out, her high-heeled white boots clacking against the floor.  As soon as she saw Holly, the pixie’s pointed features fell.  “I thought you were gone for good,” she said.

The sound of ice shattering told Holly that the first man had succeeded in breaking the leg braces.  “We tried to keep her out, Lady Bianca,” he said.  “But she’s an ice witch – we couldn’t stop her.”

“Just leave off the ‘ice,’ and it would be accurate.” Bianca didn’t even look at her employees.  She stalked up to Holly and stood with her hands on her hips.  “What do you want here?  Why are you out of Prison?”

“Thousand year marker’s up.” Holly folded her arms.  “Now look.  If I had any other chance at help – if there was a lunatic newt that lived in the center of an active volcano that could help me, I’d go to it before I’d go to you.  But there aren’t any lunatic newts around that I know of, so you’re second-best.”

“Flattered, I’m sure,” Bianca said.  “You’re charming as always.  Just spit out what you want.  Help fleeing police?  Money to bribe a Manipulator to get you to another Reality?”

Holly wanted to grab the woman by her dressy-dress collar and shake her.  “It’s Jack, all right?” she said.  “He’s... he’s sick.  I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

Bianca frowned.  “Really.”

“He passed out screaming last night,” Holly said, then corrected herself, “It was more like this morning.  Early.  Probably midnight.  I need help.”

“And why did you come to me for help, pray tell?”

“Because you have connections with some of the ice doctors,” Holly said.  “The royal physicians will know how not to mess up Jack’s blood like some of the others won’t.  And you’re head over heels for Jack.” Bianca tried to protest, but Holly wouldn’t let her.  “You’ll help him, even if you don’t trust me farther than you could throw me.” She paused.  “And you have a brutal throw.”

Bianca narrowed her eyes.  “Show me Jack, and then I’ll see if I can help you.”

Frostbitten - Chapter Nine

One Thousand Years Ago

“The dastardly duo returns,” Bianca remarked dryly.

Jack kicked the door shut with his ankle, one arm occupied around Holly’s waist, the other hand still holding a bloody rod of ice.  He gave a shudder of pleasure and tossed the rod to his third-in-command.  Bianca caught it with a quick expression of revulsion, then went austere again.  She could do austere like nobody’s business.

“It was a magnificent fight,” he announced, sinking into one of the chairs in the main foyer of Invierno Palace.  Holly sat next to him.  “You should fight, Bee.  It’s relaxing.  I could give you lessons.  Nothing like learning from a master.”

Bianca folded her arms, tossing back her pale pink hair.  “No, thank you, Your Majesty.”

Holly shot Jack a private grimace, and Jack returned it inwardly.  He knew he was in trouble when his left hand called him ‘Your Majesty.’  None of the other sprites called him that except in official business.

“I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again.” Bianca tightened her grip around the war rod’s center, and the ice between her fingers melted.  The two halves shattered when they hit the floor.  “War-mongering is not the way to keep a kingdom steady.”

Jack waved a hand.  “The election was just a year ago, Bianca.  I’ll finish up this war pretty soon, and then I’ll behave like a good, obedient king.  Jack Frost’s honor.”

Bianca snorted.  “As if that’s worth anything anymore.”

“Watch your vocal cords, you fire-witch,” Holly snapped, jumping up.

“I’d rather be a fire-witch than a murderer,” the younger pixie retorted.  She stepped closer to Holly, hands raised.

“Hey!” Jack darted between the two women.  “Relax.  Leave each other alone.”

“She’s the reason, isn’t she, Jack?” Bianca waved a finger at Holly.  “She’s the reason you’re going off on these senseless crusades.  Something about her—“

“You freakish—“ Holly started, eyes blazing.

“Whoa, whoa.” Jack whirled on Bianca, his back to Holly.  “I will not tolerate any slandering of my second-in-command, even by my third-in-command.  You are not to blame her for anything you think is out of place, for anything you dislike, for anything you simply aren’t fond of.” He paused, keeping his gaze locked on Bianca.  “I’m understood?”

Bianca’s lips were pursed bloodless, fists clenched at her waist.  “Yes.”

Jack leaned a little closer.  “Yes, what?”

“Yes...” Her eyes narrowed.  “Your Majesty.”

Jack nodded and pulled back.  “Better.” He touched Holly’s arm, feeling the tenseness in her muscles even with the light contact.  “Holly, maybe you should go change.  You’re still bloody.”

Holly opened her mouth, but Bianca interrupted.  “I’ll go with her,” the younger pixie said coolly.  “I’d like to apologize for what I said.  It wasn’t right, I know.”

Jack glanced at Holly.  “Hol?”

Holly raised her chin just a fraction, at once going relaxed and careless.  “Whatever the young girl wants,” she trilled, then turned and trotted for the steps upstairs.  Bianca went after her.

But Jack heard the poisoned words, even from on the ground floor. 

“I know you’re behind it, witch,” Bianca hissed, one fist twisting into a handful of Holly’s berry-red hair.  “You’re why Jack’s different, and I’m going to find out what you did.”

Frostbitten - Chapter Eight

Holly stayed by Jack, her ears slowly going deaf to the sound of his screaming, until a few of the other Invierno residents came.

“Took you long enough” was the only thing she could say when one of the panicking young men yanked her to her feet and led her away.  It was only when she was several hundred yards from Jack’s unnatural shrieks that she realized how quiet the city was otherwise.

The young man steering her away said his name, but it went one ear, out the other.  Holly’s thoughts zeroed in on Jack and didn’t shift.

“What are those other people gonna do with him?” She barely remembered how many citizens had appeared; she just knew it was enough to get Jack to safety. 

“They’ll take him to our hospital,” the young man soothed.  She loathed that tone he was using.  She wasn’t a fragile little icicle.  “You can stay at my house—“

“No,” Holly broke in.  “Just no.  I’m staying with him.”

The guy shrugged, and that was that.  He took Holly to the hospital – a tall, white-stone building close to the center of Invierno. Holly barely remembered the way there, just that it didn’t feel cold enough.  At all.

This was the land of ice and snow and blizzards and... and cold!   Why was it so hot...

“Miss?”

The guy’s words jolted Holly just enough for her to realize she had stopped walking.  Oh, don’t you dare pass out, she told herself, and slumped over into the curiously not-cold snow.

*

A snapping, whirring sound brought Holly out of the faint.

Something was biting into the side of her face.  Holly groaned and eased herself into a sitting position, sliding her arms over the wooden chair arms.  Her eyes felt like they were stuck together, but she managed to get them open. 

She shook her head, briefly disoriented.  The dimmed lights on the walls glowed a barely-there blue that only let her see a vague outline of the hospital room.  Just to her side, an air conditioner, cranked to the maximum setting – low, even for an Invierno AC – hummed a comforting buzz.  A window at her back let in the pre-dawn light, creeping over her shoulder and onto the hospital bed in front of her.

Holly pushed herself up on her hands.  “Jack!”

She sprang out of the chair and rammed herself against the hard edge of the hospital bed.  A cooling blanket covered Jack, leaving only his shoulders up showing.  With his face pressed into the side of his pillow, his feathery shocks of dark gold hair all tousled around his cheeks, he looked like a kid, an overgrown twelve-year-old sleeping late for school.

Holly gripped the cooling blanket in her fists, swallowing back the tightness in her throat.  “Come on, you idiot,” she whispered.  “Joke’s over.  Ha, ha, very funny.  Scare the goofy redhead who doesn’t take anything seriously, not even a millennium in a torture asylum.  I get it.  Just wake up.”

Jack didn’t move.  His eyelids flickered, like his gaze was darting back in forth in his sleep – coma – whatever it was. But that was it.

Holly gritted her teeth, hating the painful tears she kept bottled in her throat.  They made her eyes hurt, too.   “Get up, you mental patient,” she hissed.  “Open them baby blues for me.  Please?”

Nothing.  Jack’s lips parted, but nothing came out.  A silent cry for something.

Holly latched onto his hand.  His skin was dangerously warm to the touch.  “You aren’t gonna melt on me,” she said, forcing the quiver out of her voice.  Maybe he could hear her.  “You’re gonna wake up and tell me exactly why you’re doing this.  You read me, Frost?  You’re gonna give me every single detail.  And then I’m gonna toss you in a bonfire for a couple seconds.  See how it feels.”

Jack moaned, barely audible, but loud enough to go over the AC.  Holly felt fresh tears spring to her eyes and blinked hard.

“Oh, I didn’t mean it, you iceberg.” She tightened her grip on his hand.  “You know that.  Well, maybe I did mean it a little.  But I’m not going to put you in the fire.  I’ll probably never let you go long enough.”

Jack fell still, his jaw clenched.  His slender fingers gripped at the cold blanket, but it didn’t do anything to chill the warmth.

Holly eased her hand from his and straightened.  Firmed her chin.  Okay.  She could do this. 

“I’ll be back in a while, Frosty.” She bent down, hesitated, then did something she’d never dared to do before.  She pressed her lips against his warm forehead.  Then pulled back.

“And no, I’m not going to tell you about that,” Holly muttered as she hurried from the room.